Not sure if this was in honour of the 400th anniversary of William Shakespeare's death (I'd like to think so...), but we did a take on one of his plays switching it up a bit to fit into the form of a good ol' pantomime.
The name of this panto...drum roll please...'Bottoms Up!' (if you hadn't already guessed by the title) or how you may have heard it before, 'A Midsummer Night's Dream'.
The play was adapted into the form of a panto, trying to keep as many of the original lines as possible whilst not making it too complicated for the young juniors to get their heads around. Of course just like any other panto there was the addition of popular songs as well.
This production included 41 costumes after talking the count down from 52. Just to remind you, Amateur dramatics, less than 5 months from getting the script (if they finish it in time) to doing the performance, with me as the costume department....! A Donkey head and almost some fairy wings...almost.
However I'm happy to say that with the right advertising this managed to be one of the best pantomimes the group had done for a while.
This time we had a budget of £250 for the costumes, after having several conversations to get a budget in the first place.
We were also able to use a contact of the director/writer; the owner of a local textile company to source some material.
I have never been taught how to work out how much material is needed to buy (which I know sounds absolutely ludicrous); I've always just been told "oh about so much should be alright...". So I spent a while drawing out small sketches of patterns with lengthy annotations, trying to figure out how much fabric I would need. Does anyone know the proper way to estimate the amount of fabric for a costume without pattern laying? If you do, please let me know...
Anyway, after meeting up, getting the fabric and how much the total came to, we didn't actually save that much money, if any. With some of the materials still to be ordered I decided to go back to looking on eBay, finding that the other materials would be cheaper rather than through the textile company's suppliers. I'm still glad I had the opportunity to see inside the company as it was good experience and the owner was very kind for how he helped us.
Luckily enough I was also offered help by the director's mother, who was able to knock up 4 of the costumes for me, from the designs and measurements, which I am incredibly thankful for!
So that's about it for the overview, I think I'll split the posts into four sections:
-The Athenians
-The Mechanicals
-The Donkey Head
-The Fairies
Links:
As ever, if you are interested in the drama group itself that I do the costumes for please check out their website at http://www.thegrangeplayers.co.uk or their Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/thegrangeplayers where there are more photos to look at and you can check out any upcoming shows.
~K
